Becka scampered out from under me, grabbed her clothes off the floor and dove into bed, yanking the covers over her head. The footsteps stopped outside the door. Then I heard muffled talking. A hand turned on the doorknob and I thought our dad was going to burst in, but instead it opened only a crack. I heard my mother’s voice.

“Let them be. I am sure they were just making fun of us. They can hear us through these walls you know.” Thank God for mothers.

“They can? Oh Christ. Maybe I should go in and explain it to them.”

“Really Peter? You should go into your children’s bedroom and tell them that you are fucking their mother and the screams they hear are perfectly natural. I need to hear this.” I could hear her coming down the hall and the door clicked shut. Then I could hear both of them suppressing a good laugh as their combined footsteps retreated down the hall. Becka moved silently back to my bed.

“That was close!” she gasped. I could see well enough to see she had taken the opportunity to get dressed. “It doesn’t matter, Paul. I would still love you. Even if dad does find out and beat you to within an inch of your life.” She gave me a kiss and disappeared back to her bed. When my heart stopped racing, I finally relaxed enough to go to sleep.

We had Franklin High in the second round of the playoffs. They were eager for a little payback for the beating they took earlier in the year. When we beat them back in September, we had Jack Baldwin with his brothers James and Joe to help. Jack got his leg badly broken against a piss-poor team and his brothers got kicked off the team for a dirty retaliation play. Now Jack was itching to get out of traction and back to school. His leg was finally mended well enough that he thought he could start hobbling around on crutches, but Centerville High has three stories and stairs everywhere. He wouldn’t be able to get around much. When he returned, the principle decided to let Jack stay in the library all day and have his school work delivered to him. He would be surrounded by cute little high school girls all day and loving the attention, so I guess there was a little silver lining in his cold dark cloud. Without football, Joe and James had already started wrestling practice, where the coaches were exceptionally hard on them for their serious lapse in judgment.

Practice for the week before the Franklin rematch was brutal. Coach Kennedy wasn’t taking any chances. Franklin had knocked us out the playoffs the previous year and we had thoroughly dismantled them already once. Now it was Franklin’s turn to get some payback. Even though we had identical 10-1 records, our head-to-head record gave us home field advantage. If you wanted a ticket to that game, you were out of luck. They went on sale at noon on Wednesday and were sold out before 1 pm. Additional portable bleachers were brought in to put the students behind the end zones. It was a madhouse. I thought there were a hundred thousand people there, and I’ve had more than ten thousand swear to me they were there, but the official capacity was only nine thousand.

It was wet that night. And cold. Perfect northwest weather for football. Our field had a heavy crown for drainage, which kept the middle of the field playable, but it left both sidelines six inches deep in muddy rainwater. The game was scoreless at half time and both teams were so muddy that the only way to tell us apart was the color of our helmets, which the pouring rain kept somewhat clean. All the rain didn’t dampen the spirits of our fans. Both sides of the field were loud the entire game. The end zones were filled with sopping, screaming teenagers. I get goose pimples just remembering that night.

Our first score of the second half came on a belly dive by the fullback. Franklin was used to Spud faking the carry and then blocking the linebacker, so when Spud came through the line, pretending to carry the ball, they all made a beeline for me. Spud missed his block on the linebacker and then kept lumbering up the hill toward the goal line. When the free safety realized that Spud had the ball, it was too late. Spud isn’t fast, but he is strong as a bull and heavy. His cleats sank in deep and he kept his legs moving, dragging the ineffective free safety the last ten yards into the end zone for his first carry of the game and his first touchdown. Ever.

Franklin made the mistake of throwing the ball in the vicinity of Harold Handell and he intercepted and slipped and slid for fifteen yards before being tackled. We had the momentum and the execution. It took us five minutes to march the thirty yards for the second score of the night. Up 16-0, Franklin had no choice but to try and throw again. This time Greg Chapman stepped in front of a quick slant, the ball squirted up off his muddy chest and hands and then dropped back into his flailing arms like a loaf of bread. He got blasted out of bounds inside the ten and slid another fifteen feet before nearly drowning in a puddle. We ran the double stack right and marched in for the score on the next play. We failed on the double try and had the lead at 22-0. Franklin couldn’t get on track and we killed the clock for most of the fourth quarter. The score stayed the same. We were now one game away from a state championship showdown.

The two teams met at midfield to shake hands. We looked so ridiculous, caked in mud and sopping wet. It wasn’t that bad. Franklin wished us well, hoping that we would continue to win until we took state. It would be small solace that they had lost twice to the state champions, but they were trying to make the best of their broken hearts.

We were so muddy that coach made us take off everything but our girdle pants before going into the locker room. Back in those days, you wore a pair of elastic shorts that held your hip pads and tailbone pad. Nowadays, they uniform pants have spots sown in to hold those pads. When all you are wearing is girdle pants and sock, you can’t help but look like a baby in a diaper. But we looked like diapered babes as a team, so it made it alright.

I took a hot shower at the school to try and get warm and wash off all that sticky mud. We all lingered in the shower, oblivious to our families still waiting outside in the rain. Then the team filed out of the locker room in twos and threes to join fans and families in the parking lot. There was a big crowd still waiting. As I exited, Dale Stanton, the sports writer for the Centerville Gazette-Times buttonholed me. He wanted to interview me about the upcoming game the following Friday night against Bishop Newman. I flushed red and didn’t know what to say. I had never spoken to a reporter before and Coach Kennedy was perfectly clear about his stance on his team talking to the press. It was absolutely forbidden. I was about panic or to mumble an answer, I was certain which. Then I heard a familiar voice booming from across half the parking lot.

“Dale Stanton, leave that kid alone! You know Coach K will have his hide if he talks to you.” That’s true, Coach K would make an example of me. After all, I was still a FRESHman in his eyes. I turned to greet my savior.

“JACK! It’s great to see you! I didn’t think you were getting out of the hospital until Monday.” Jack Baldwin clearly wasn’t that comfortable on his crutches and in spite of the cold, he was sweating from a combination of the effort and the pain. I left the reporter behind and I trotted over to greet my friend.

“Good game, Pauly. Better than I could have done,” he tousled my hair. “If I hadn’t broken my leg, Coach might have broken it for you just so you could be his new quarterback.”

“You are so full of it. We are a much better team with you at quarterback. I am just lucky.”

“Luck has a way of finding someone who works as hard as you do, Pauly. Remember that. You made your own luck.” He looked me right in the eye and I could feel some kind of hidden meaning passing between us. I stood up a little straighter. What he said really had an impact on me.

“Thanks,” I finally said because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Are you coming to the A&W for burgers?”

“Nah, ‘fraid not. I gotta get back to the hospital before they find out I’ve gone AWOL. I’ll be back in school on Monday. Take care! And take care of your little sweetheart too.” He nodded his head back at my family who were watching our exchange. My sister was standing next to my girlfriend. It didn’t matter which one of them he was referring to, my heart belonged to both.

The A & W was rocking that night. Playoff fever gripped everyone. The single greatest advantage of being a local celebrity was the instant service we received when we ordered our traditional bacon cheeseburgers and root beer floats to celebrate. I am sure the kitchen was swamped, but we got our food in record time. I didn’t complain, because I didn’t notice. I was too hungry to notice or to complain if I did. Katie had convinced her folks to come to the drive in to help celebrate. I think her dad was a little proud that his daughter was dating the starting quarterback of the Centerville Warriors.

The high school kids were standing around the picnic tables that line the space between the two long lines of cars. The parents and families all lingered around their cars, having a good time just enjoying the camaraderie of the post-game celebration. Three strangers pushed through the crowd, making a beeline for me.

“HEY! You Paul David?” one of them shouted. I just turned and looked. The crowd around us got quiet.

“Yeah, he’s Paul David,” shouted one of my teammates. “Who are you?”

“He don’t look like much,” said one of the interlopers, ignoring the question. “We expected someone bigger. And older. He don’t look like much more than a kid.”

“I said, who the fuck are you?” shouted my friend. Now things were getting tense. Some of the parents around the perimeter, leaning on the cars stood up straight.

“We’re from Bishop Newman. We’re here to give you a message. The message is: Get your affairs in order. You won’t make it through next Friday alive.”

Everyone was silent. I could feel the ire of some of my teammates beginning to rise.

“Well thanks for the heads up. That’s mighty CHRISTIAN of you.” Everyone laughed except the three interlopers. “Be sure to say a prayer for me at Mass.” The chortles turned to catcalls.

“Laugh now, you’ve been warned.” They turned and skulked away. The crowd whistled and cat-called them until they got in their car and drove away, tires spinning on the wet pavement.

I rejoined my family a short time later. Then I kissed my girlfriend goodbye and we each headed home. When we got home, the chill had tightened up my muscles so I took a hot bath to warm up and relax. It was late and my sister got shooed away by our mother and sent to bed. I fell asleep in the tub and woke up when my mother came to tell me that she and dad were headed to bed. The water was tepid so I climbed out. On my way through the kitchen I helped myself to a leftover pork chop from the fridge and pulled it from the bone. I put it between two slices of bread and ate it dry, chasing it with big slugs of ice cold milk from the glass Sunnybrook Dairy bottle. I thought about those kids from Bishop Newman. I’d never seen that kind of rabid fandom before. I wish I could say it was the last time I would ever see it.

When I got into the bedroom my sister and I share, I decided to stop by my sister’s bed. She was curled up on her side, pretending to be asleep but I knew better. I tickled her ribs and she didn’t stir. I kissed her neck and she didn’t stir. Then I moved the blankets down her legs and slid her panties off her butt. Still she feigned sleep. I tickled her ass crack and still she lay still, but I could tell by her breathing that she was holding her breath. I put my head behind her legs and let my tongue tickle her puffy pink pussy lips. Still she refused to stir. I assaulted her pussy with my mouth and she refused to budge so I just lapped up her juices as they flowed and then covered her back up and slipped in between my own chilly sheets. I was too tired to bother with anything anyway.

At work the next day, it was Christmas tree harvest time. Rusty, Tater, Spud and I spent the entire day driving the tractor back and forth to the lower tree farm. I was pulling a trailer that had bench seats bolted to it in three rows and with the remaining space open. The space in the back was for the trees that the people would cut down for themselves. When we got back to the farm we wrapped up the trees with twine and helped tie them to whatever vehicle each family drove out. Everyone’s spirits were bright and cheery. Thanksgiving was only a week away and the holiday spirit was strong. Instead of eating lunchbox lunch, Mrs. Loeschen made duck and dumplings with sauerkraut. I was tempted to keep eating until I foundered, but I quit after two large helpings. I think Mrs. Loeschen was pleased by our appetites. Though it was tough to move, we waddled out and helped some more folks get their perfect trees. OSU was on the radio and we were all rooting for the Beavers when we had a chance to hear a snippet from the game.

When I got home from work that night, dad and Becka were gone. “They went out for a father-daughter evening, to celebrate your sister’s birthday.” That seemed strange to me. We’d never split up the family to celebrate anything. “I suggested it. A young woman needs to be close to her father. It’s tough on your dad, thinking about his daughter becoming a woman. They are going to The Gables and then to a movie. They should be home around midnight.”

“You suggested it? It’s kind of different, but okay. I guess.” I was confused. “I’m going to take a bath. Warm up after the chill.”

“Okay Paul. Do you want some supper?”

“Sure.”

I stripped down and climbed into the hot bath. As I relaxed, my mom joined me in the bathroom with a plate of pot roast with summer corn and mashed potatoes smothered in beef gravy. The smell was enough to spring wood for me. I didn’t make a move to cover up. I just relaxed and enjoyed eating my dinner with one hand while balancing the plate on the rounded edge of the tub with my other.

“Have enough?” she asked, taking my plate and setting it on the sink.

“Yes ma’am!” I replied, now stuffed again. I closed my eyes and sank lower in the tub. I felt the water stir around my groin and then my mother’s hand around my semi-hard cock. I opened my eyes and watched as she slowly stroked my erection, coaxing it to full arousal. She seemed mesmerized by my manhood. When she noticed I was watching her, she grabbed my plate from the sink and left me alone with my boner in the steamy bathroom. I waited, expecting her to come back. She didn’t. So I climbed out, toweled off, threw my shorts over my shoulder and walked out of the bathroom stark naked. She was standing at the sink, washing up from dinner. I slipped my arms around her waist and kissed her on the neck. She didn’t protest as I explored her firm curves. I unbuttoned her pants and pushed them down her hips, taking her panties with them. Then I reached up behind her shirt and unhitched her bra. I made her raise her arms above her head as I lifted her shirt and bra off. I kissed her all over her neck and back and down to her ass. I knelt behind her and spread her ass cheeks. She leaned forward to give me better access to her swollen cunt.

I was intoxicated by my mother’s scent. Her pussy was much hairier than Becka’s or Katie’s or even Sandy’s for that matter. I licked her pussy from behind. She pushed back against me. I licked again, this time parting her labia with my tongue. She shuddered lightly and I continued. I licked her pussy until I could smell and taste the change in the juices coming from within. I lapped up these up, driving my tongue as deep as it would reach. The pleasure she was feeling she translated into guttural moans. This inspired me to press harder. When I did this, my nose pressed against her musky nether hole. I pushed her ass cheeks wider, wide enough that her rosebud clenched and unclenched with the waves of pleasure that were radiating from my tongue to her pussy. I continued to tongue fuck her, getting more and more aroused by what I was seeing, tasting and smelling. She responded by pressing her ass back onto my face, trying to get my tongue deeper inside her. As she was beginning to erupt, I stood up, fumbling to position my cock against her pussy, eager to get inside her. She let out a small scream and stood straight up.

“No Pauly! Not that. Here, let me take care of you another way.” She knelt before me and took my cock in her mouth. She purposely got it wet and slick. Then she slid my damp cock between her ample breasts, squeezing them around my shaft. She proceeded to titty fuck me until I blasted a load all over her breasts, her mouth, her face. My mother gathered my cum into her mouth with her fingers and smiled.

“How did you like that?” she asked with a touch of naughtiness in her voice.

“That was great mom.” My balls agreed. “But this would be better….” I put my hands under her arms and hoisted her up. I sat her on the counter and stood between her spread knees. My hardness hadn’t abated one bit. I picked her legs up and removed her pants and panties the rest of the way. Now she was entirely naked for my viewing pleasure. I took a moment to gaze at my mother with a critical eye. She was damn beautiful. Desirable in every sense. But she looked so small now, so fragile. I could see past her as my mother and see her clearly as a woman. We were on the edge of something so incredible and so taboo, I couldn’t begin to understand the consequences. I hesitated.

I pulled her ass toward the edge of the counter, until her pussy was just at the edge. She had her arms around my neck.

“Are you sure you want to do this Paul? Are you sure you want to have sex with your mother?” I answered by kissing her on the mouth, like a lover does a lover. Instead of feeling weird, it felt natural and familiar. I let my hands roam on her upper body, stroking the sides of her breasts, her hips, her thighs, her shoulders, her neck.

“How can any man not want you Mom? You are so incredibly sexy.”

“You don’t have to do this. But I won’t stop you if you really want it. Lord knows I want to know what that cock of yours feels like inside me. I can’t stop you anyway. I want it so bad.” She seemed to be pleading with me to both fuck her and be strong and turn away. I placed the head of my cock against her hot cunt and paused. She shifted her hips, not further back, but closer to me. A little bit of my head disappeared into her. I looked down and that was all it took. It was so hot to see my cock in my mother’s cunt, I knew I wasn’t going to stop. I pushed in and slid the entire length in with one slow stroke. She exhaled heavily and dropped her head against my shoulder.

“Lord forgive us,” she prayed allowed and raised her ankles up to trap thighs and spur me on.

‘Lord give me strength,’ I prayed silently and began to slowly fuck her, vowing to make it last as long as I could. I stood there sliding my cock in and out of her pussy until she tensed and squirted hot juices on my shaft. But I didn’t stop. I kept going, now adding a twist of the hips somewhere in each stroke. She clung to me, holding me tight as if trying to get my deep into her and hold it. I still sawed at her, savoring the velvet vise that was her pussy. My own orgasm was building and I would change the pace to keep from ejaculating, almost coming to a complete stop until the throbbing subsided.

It was too much. I started to fuck her with furious energy. She responded by urging me on.

“Come on Pauly, give it to me. Fuck me with that cock son. Fuck me until I can’t take it. Fuck me, fuck me FUUUUUUCK MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” and that was all it took. I came inside my mother and we shared a sublime moment of orgasmic bliss that would connect us for all time.

“No wonder Dad loves to fuck you so much,” I complimented her.

“Don’t talk to me like that Paul. Or about your father. I love him and he loves me. What we did is just between us. I mean it.”

“Of course. Don’t be mad. It was great mom! Really!” I felt sheepish telling my mom she was a good lay with my cock still in her. “I will always remember this night.”

She pushed me away and grabbed her clothes and disappeared into the bathroom. I got dressed and pulled on a t-shirt to ward off the chill. I could hear my mother sobbing in the bathroom but she wouldn’t open the door and she wouldn’t answer me, so I finally gave up and went to bed. She never came in and said good night and I ended up going to sleep confused and proud. I couldn’t help but think I had done something terribly wrong and I had no idea how to fix it. I decided to just let it be.

“Not tonight Becka,” I told my sister when she crawled into bed with me later that night. “I’m really tired.”

“That’s ok, Paul. We can just snuggle. I like to snuggle with you.”

“Ok, I guess that will be fine.” I wrapped my arms around her and went right back to sleep.

The state semi-final game with Bishop Newman was scheduled to be played at Bishop Newman, but the demand for tickets was so great, we ended up playing at City University Stadium instead. With a capacity of just over fourteen thousand, it was a sellout. The newspapers had gotten wind of the threats by Bishop Newman’s fans and as a precaution, there were state police officers stationed along each sideline.

Before the game, the Bishop Newman players stood at mid-field and pointed and taunted us. Most of the taunts were directed at me and the amount of pain I was about to absorb. Coach Kennedy walked to midfield himself and stood with his back to them, glaring at us instead, daring one of us to rise to the bait. Finally the officials blew their whistles and waved them back so we could warm up without distraction.

To start the game we punched an on-side kick. Harold Hannibal went up over the Bishop Newman lineman and grabbed the ball off of one bounce. It was absolute bedlam when the officials awarded us the ball. Coach Kennedy was sending Coach Chip Fordham of Bishop Newman a message: “Run your mouth and we will run up the score.” And run we did. We ran left, we ran right, we ran up the middle. We had to start rotating our wide receivers in at halfback to give our running backs a break. At half time we were up 35-0, and my ribs looked like I’d been punched with a sack of oranges. In every pileup, Bishop Newman tried to get extra licks in. They were playing dirty and the more we scored, the dirtier they got.

In the second half, I expected Coach Kennedy to call of the dogs, run a ball control offense and run out the clock. Everyone in the state expected that as well. Instead, Coach Kennedy put his boot to Coach Fordham’s throat and gave it a twist. We blitzed on every play on defense and we scored on every series on offense. We held Bishop Newman to minus 5 yards in the second half while we set records for almost every offensive category in the state playoffs. Final score was an embarrassing 77-0.

“Next time you threaten one of my athletes again,” growled Coach Kennedy into the ear of Coach Fordham at the post game handshake, “I’ll let the kid throw the damn ball and beat you by a hundred.” There were no ‘good games’ exchanged by the two teams, just the perfunctory handshakes. Most of our fans had the good sense to wait until we got back to Centerville to celebrate. A couple of my classmates couldn’t help but taunt the douchebags from Bishop Newman.

“It looks like your planned crucifixion didn’t go like you planned,” they shouted. “Or did you forget: The savior rose again after three days!”

It would be twenty-three years before Bishop Newman ever made it as far as the state semi-finals again. Not long after that game, Coach Fordham resigned and took an offensive coordinator job at a Methodist college in Oklahoma. I am sure the cardinal gave him the option, resign or be fired.

Centerville High was festooned in state championship banners and posters. Championship fever had everyone whipped up into frenzy. The game was going to be Friday night at Parker Stadium on the OSU campus. It was practically a home game for us. Our opponent was Pine City. They were the eastern state regional champions and had lost two games before getting hot in the playoffs. Like us they were mostly country kids, from ranch families. Rangy, tough, smart and would not quit.

On the bus Monday morning after the Bishop Newman game, my stomach felt like I had eaten gravel for breakfast. It was wet and raining of course. Even seeing Katie didn’t lift my spirits that much.

“What’s wrong Paul?” she asked with genuine concern. “Are you sick?” How could I explain to her that my mom had hardly spoken to me since the previous weekend when we had sex? How could I explain how scared I was that I was about to be the biggest bust in school history? I should have been at the top of the world, but I felt like I was at the bottom.

“I know what you need. Meet me in the cheerleader practice room at lunch. I can fix you right up.” That did perk up my spirits.

When noon rolled around, I found myself in the cheerleader team room. There were nine cheerleaders spread out all over the floor painting posters with tempura paint to adorn the walls with, but not one of them was Katie.

“Looking for Katie?” asked one of the older girls. I nodded. “She’s in the back getting some more paper and paint. Why don’t you go give her a hand?” She pointed at a set of double doors that led to the storage room. I followed her finger and found myself in a room filled with all manners of cheerleading apparatus. There were uniforms, megaphones, pom-poms, giant rolls of newsprint, even warrior regalia.

“Katie?” I half-yelled. “You in here?”

“Back here!” came a voice from deeper within. I worked my way through the piles of gear and could see that there was actually a space between the shelves where it led back even deeper into the storage room. I rounded the shelves to find Katie on the floor, wearing nothing but a smile. She was laying on a pile of tumbling mats as a bed.

“Come here,” she commanded. “Come and work out some of your kinks. I know you are worried, but I am going to help you relax.”

“Katie, those other cheerleaders are right out there…..” I said, nodding my head toward the door. “What are they going to say if they come in here?”

“They aren’t going to come in here silly. They are the ones who put me up to this. They said if I didn’t help you relax, they would do it for me. This happens all the time. Why do you think this is built like this?” I looked around. What she said about the layout made sense. “It’s a Warrior Cheerleader tradition to ‘relax’ the players before a big game. I am here for you all week. Not because you are the quarterback, but because you are Paul David and I love you.”

My heart flipped. “I love you too Katie. So much.”

“Prove it. Get those pants down and put Thorhammer to work. I’ve really missed you.”

I did what I was told. Katie and I spent a blissful lunch hour fucking like bunnies. It worked, all my stress melted away. I didn’t even mind the knowing looks we received when we finally emerged. I felt so good, I would have let them watch if they were that damn curious.

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